The former Sports Military Training Department of Sports Department was established in 1987 and renamed as the Department of Sports in 2011. It mainly undertakes physical education, group competition, college students’ physique test, postgraduate training, sports team training and sports research. The college boasts a faculty of 51 teaching staffs, including 42 full-time teachers, 5 professors, 20 associate professors, 1 teacher with doctoral degree, and 39 teachers with master’s degrees. Currently, the department is home to 4 member of national academic organizations and individual associations, 1 member of the National Teaching Guidance Committee on Physical Education in Higher Education under the Ministry of Education，4 international judges and 9 national judges, 4 editorial board members of international and domestic journals.
The department of Sports obtained the authorization point of physical education and training in 2003. It offers two research directions: sports teaching theory and method and sports project training, as well as training theory and practice in higher education, and there are two laboratories for human science and sports psychology.
The department has built a student-oriented PE curriculum system, opened compulsory PE courses for undergraduate students in grades 1-3, physical education elective courses for senior undergraduate and graduate students, and offered more than 20 sports projects in PE courses. With the goal of improving students’ sports skills, physical fitness and habits, the department forms a three-three system sports club teaching mode integrated inside and outside the class, which takes league system, points system and performance system as main carriers. It also boasts two excellent courses in Heilongjiang Province, University Students Sports and Volleyball, and The Truth of Physical Exercise are awarded with the provincial first-class course in 2021.
In recent years, the teachers have published over 300 papers, more than 50 monographs and textbooks, 7 audio-visual textbooks, and more than 90 research projects in academic journals at all levels. Among them, there are 2 national projects and 3 sub-projects, more than 20 provincial projects such as the Provincial Natural Science Foundation, 1 second prize for scientific and technological contributions from the Department of Science and Education of General Administration of Sports of China, 1 first prize and 4 second prizes for outstanding teaching achievements in Heilongjiang Province. In addition, the department holds 20 worksheets, such as MOOCs, teaching websites and multimedia courseware, of which 2 won the first prize of the National Multimedia Courseware Competition of the Ministry of Education and 3 won the first prize of the Multimedia Courseware Competition in Heilongjiang Province.
The department successfully hosted the 2009 Universiade Sports Science Congress and many experts and scholars at home and abroad are invited to give academic lectures. In recent years, teachers have participated in more than 100 international and domestic academic exchanges such as Olympic Science Congress, Asian Games Sports Science Congress, Universiade Sports Science Congress, and the National Sports Science Congress.
As one of the first batch of high-level sports team construction universities in China, Harbin Engineering University (HEU) holds 3 high-level sports teams in athletics, women’s volleyball and women’s basketball and 9 sunshine student teams. The department is home to 14 national championships, 158 provincial championships, 19 students with 22 provincial Universiade records, and many other awards such as the Sports Ethics Award of the Games. It is worth noting that the department won the bronze medal in pair skating at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, the silver medal in the women’s speed skating 500m, and the pair skating champion at the 6th Asian Winter Games in 2007.
HEU boasts a comprehensive gymnasium covering an area of 32,000 square meters and complete facilities, with an average outdoor sports area of nearly 6 square meters. Students’ activities are complete in system and various in content. After years of continuous exploration, we have established a campus sports event activity system featured with full-coverage and multi-level operation mechanism. HEU began to held Sports and Culture Festival in 1997, and added the Sunshine Sports Activity Month in 2007. Every year, more than 20 popular competition projects are carried out for students, with increasing variety and frequency of related events. Various physical exercise activities and events are encouraged to organized by faculties and departments. Correspondingly, there are nearly 20 projects in the student sports association and the football association has won the title of National Top 100 Campus Football Clubs. Following the idea of weakening competition and emphasizing participation, the extracurricular activities have formed a group activity system with participation rate as the main evaluation index, which organizes and mobilizes more students to participate in related activities. All of these above has formed a group activity system with HEU’s characteristics and created a strong atmosphere about campus sports and culture.
Thanks to its sports work, HEU was authorized as the National Advanced Institute for Sports and Health Work by the Ministry of Education and the General Administration of Sports of China.
